Samuel Johnson - Mind Quotes

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To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which if not a virtue, is the groundwork of a virtue.

Samuel Johnson
The love of retirement has, in all ages, adhered closely to those minds which have been most enlarged by knowledge, or elevated by genius.

Samuel Johnson
With these [Love, Patience, Faith] celestial Wisdom calms the mind, And makes the happiness she does not find.

Samuel Johnson
Babies do not want to hear about babies; they like to be told of giants and castles, and of somewhat which can stretch and stimulate their little minds.

Samuel Johnson
They who have already enjoyed the crowds and noise of the great city, know their desire to return is little more than the restlessness of a vacant mind, that they are not so much led by hope as driven by disgust, and wish rather to leave the country than to see the town.

Samuel Johnson
When the eye or the imagination is struck with an uncommon work, the next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it was performed

Samuel Johnson
To understand the works of celebrated authors, to comprehend their systems, and retain their reasonings, is a task more than equal to common intellects; and he is by no means to be accounted useless or idle, who has stored his mind with acquired knowledge, and can detail it occasionally to others who have less leisure or weaker abilities.

Samuel Johnson
Among the anfractuosities of the human mind, I know not if it may not be one, that there is a superstitious reluctance to sit for a picture.

Samuel Johnson
He that condemns himself to compose on a stated day will often bring to his task attention dissipated, a memory embarrassed, an imagination overwhelmed, a mind distracted with anxieties, a body languishing with disease: he will labour on a barren topic till it is too late to change it; or, in the ardour of invention, diffuse his thoughts into wild exuberance, which the pressing hour of publication cannot suffer judgment to examine or reduce.

Samuel Johnson
If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur.

Samuel Johnson
It is man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.

Samuel Johnson
Such are the vicissitudes of the world, through all its parts, that day and night, labor and rest, hurry and retirement, endear each other; such are the changes that keep the mind in action: we desire, we pursue, we obtain, we are satiated; we desire something else and begin a new pursuit.

Samuel Johnson
No mind is much employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments.

Samuel Johnson
But, perhaps, the flatterer is not often detected; for an honest mind is not apt to suspect, and no one exerts the power of discernment with much vigour when selflove favors the deceit.

Samuel Johnson
What is read with delight is commonly retained, because pleasure always secures attention; but the books which are consulted by occasional necessity, and perused with impatience, seldom leave any traces on the mind.

Samuel Johnson
It ought to be deeply impressed on the minds of all who have voices in this national deliberation, that no man can deserve a seat in parliament, who is not a patriot. No other man will protect our rights: no other man can merit our confidence.
A patriot is he whose publick conduct is regulated by one single motive, the love of his country; who, as an agent in parliament, has, for himself, neither hope nor fear, neither kindness nor resentment, but refers every thing to the common interest.

Samuel Johnson
To expect that the intricacies of science will be pierced by a careless glance, or the eminences of fame ascended without labour, is to expect a peculiar privilege, a power denied to the rest of mankind; but to suppose that the maze is inscrutable to diligence, or the heights inaccessible to perseverance, is to submit tamely to the tyranny of fancy, and enchain the mind in voluntary shackles.

Samuel Johnson
Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Samuel Johnson
There is no temper more unpropitious to interest than desultory application and unlimited inquiry, by which the desires are held in a perpetual equipoise, and the mind fluctuates between different purposes without determination.

Samuel Johnson
A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists without any practical regard to morals and religion; he may be learning not to live but to reason... while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed.

Samuel Johnson
Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend.

Samuel Johnson
"Some," answered Imlac, "have indeed said that the soul is material, but I can scarcely believe that any man has thought it, who knew how to think; for all the conclusions of reason enforce the immateriality of mind, and all the notices of sense and investigations of science, concur to prove the unconsciousness of matter.

Samuel Johnson
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Samuel Johnson
A merchant may, perhaps, be a man of an enlarged mind, but there is nothing in trade connected with an enlarged mind.

Samuel Johnson
There is not, perhaps, to a mind well instructed, a more painful occurrence, than the death of one we have injured without reparation.

Samuel Johnson
As the mind must govern the hands, so in every society the man of intelligence must direct the man of labor.

Samuel Johnson
A fellow that makes no figure in company, and has a mind as narrow as the neck of a vinegar-cruet.

Samuel Johnson
I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else.

Samuel Johnson
Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something acquired.... Do not suffer life to stagnate; it will grow muddy for want of motion: commit yourself again to the current of the world.

Samuel Johnson
If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.

Samuel Johnson